The History of Fossil Reptiles. 369 helping on the time when he shall be able more completely to understand the wondrous plan of diversity and unity upon which the organic world is built. But more must be known, and what we now know must be better known, before this desired consummation can be reached. The history of fossil reptiles is a very remarkable one. There are few animals belonging either to the vertebrate or invertebrate division of the animal kingdom that cannot easily be referred to allies of the same order now living on the globe. But the forms of fossil reptiles are so different from any at present existing, that as many new orders have been established for the fossil species as are required for the recent. The Secondary period was specially prolific in singular forms and great numbers of reptiles. Herbivorous species tenanted the land,-immense animals, with bodies like our small active lizards, but between fifty and sixty feet in length, and supported on long and firm legs. The waters were filled with strange forms, some like huge crocodiles, and others like featherless swans, all able to propel themselves quickly through or along the surface of the water by means of two pairs of paddles with which they were furnished instead of feet. And at the same time, the air also had its reptilian inhabitants,-creatures like monster bats, that must have been formidable enemies to the other tenants of the air, from their great size, rapid flight, and strong predacious jaws. This was indeed the period of reptiles. It is strange that creatures, admirably fitted to maintain their places as masters of the air, the earth, and the water, have not, in the struggle for existence, retained that superiority, nor even sent down to our days, a single representative. Many singular forms, especially among the Pterodactyles or flying reptiles, have recently been discovered, but the most remarkable addition is one which is somewhat retrograde as regards the class. The footprints of a small fourfooted animal were observed in 1850 in a quarry of red sandstone near Elgin, and in the following year the bones of a lizard, scarcely half a foot in length, were found. The size of this fossil, and the structure of its feet, were such as to make it more than probable that the footprints were produced by it. This was considered the oldest known quadruped, but in the progress of research, the sandstones which were, after examination by Murchison and others, without hesitation referred to Devonian age, have lately been shewn to be not older than the lowest division of the Secondary period, so that this curious little reptile has thus been brought down from its place of importance, as it occurs at a time when reptiles were common. Indeed, many existed in the dense forests of the coal period, and very recently Professor Huxley has greatly increased their numbers by describing several new genera, and many new species from the Scotch and Irish coal fields. Reptiles, which present so many anomalies to the paleontologist, have accordingly, during the past few years, had, as the result of more careful observation, their antiquity greatly reduced, instead of, as in the other divisions of the animal kingdom, being carried further back in the geological history of the world. The history of fossil birds forms one of the most interesting chapters in the recent progress of geology. Their remains are on the whole scarce, probably because they had the power of flight, and were so liable, whether living or dead, to become the prey of other animals. Fragments of the skeletons of species belonging to the principal divisions of the class have been found in Tertiary strata; some belong to creatures of great size and remarkable structure, as the huge running birds of New Zealand and Madagascar, the complete skeletons of some species of which have been discovered. Until within the last three years no actual relic had been found in strata of greater age than the Tertiary period, although the existence of many species was positively known as far back as the Lias, from the footprints they had left in their progress over the soft mud on the sea shore. The foot of the bird presents a peculiarity which at once enables the paleontologist to distinguish impressions made by it from those of any other animal. The toes present a regular increase of one joint in each from the inside outwards. Many reptiles have three-toed feet which otherwise could not be distinguished from those of birds. But the tracks from the Liassic beds of Connecticut Valley have very distinct impressions of the joints of the toes, and these exhibit the regular progression of the bird's foot. These tracks, consequently, testify to the existence of thirty different kinds of birds, some of immense size, greatly exceeding the ostrich, and others as small as a pigeon; not a single bone has, however, been detected in the strata where the footprints occur. The earliest actual ornithic remains are those of a remarkable bird almost perfect which have been lately found in the lithographic stone of Solenhofen in Bavaria. First a single feather turned up; and as feathers are an appendage peculiar to birds, it was held to indicate their existence at the period of the deposition of these beds. A few months subsequently, an almost perfect skeleton was discovered; but this presented, in the long lizard-like tail it possessed, an anomaly so singular and unprecedented, that The long-tailed Bird from Solenhofen. 371 the original describer considered it to be a creature having greater affinities to reptiles than to birds, and in this view he has been followed by a few geologists. But a feathered reptile would not only be a novelty, it would be without anything analogous among living or hitherto known fossil animals. There are, however, many peculiarities of structure besides the feathers which establish its ornithic relationship. It has true wings, and the wing bones correspond with those of living birds; the legs and feet can belong only to a bird, and no other class of animals possess a merrythought. Even the anomalous tail is not as great an anomaly as at first sight it appears, for though in all our living birds the tail bones are few and joined together in the adult condition, yet an examination of their development shews that the short strong bone is composed of many vertebræ which with the growth of the individual become united, so as to give support to the fan-tail common to all recent birds. In this ancient fossil the embryo state of its modern representatives is its permanent condition, and the peculiar arrangement of the feathers on the tail are adapted to this condition. This unique skeleton carries the record of birds from their actual remains down a great way in the series of fossiliferous deposits, though yet far short of that period during which, from the impressions of their feet, we know that they existed. The recent increase in our knowledge of fossil mammals is as great as in the other vertebrate classes. Perhaps no department of geology has lately received more attention. than that which relates to man's early contemporaries, many of which have even now disappeared from the globe. But all these inquiries are in so crude a condition, and are mixed up with so much baseless hypothesis, that it is impossible at present to separate the truth from the clouds of personal opinions and conjectures which envelop them. Much has been written that might shake our belief in the inspired narrative of creation, but if we separate the suppositions and the arguments founded thereon, from the truths and the legitimate deductions based on them, we find that nothing remains to excite in the mind of the most conservative maintainer of the inspiration of the whole Bible the least alarm. In no division of geology, indeed in no department of science, must statements be more cautiously received than those regarding the phenomena of Tertiary geology. For there is scarcely an observer who has not some favourite theory to support, and when he takes the field he sees everything through his own coloured glasses. Omitting then the later mammalian remains found. what is now called the Quaternary period, we find that for many years the existence of mammals has been known throughout the whole of the Tertiary period, and that even Cuvier was acquainted with a minute marsupial from the Stonesfield slate. This bed of the Lower Oolite supplied the only mammalian remains of Secondary age until 1854, when a lower jaw was found in a marl bed of the Purbeck of Dorsetshire. Two years afterwards, Mr Beckles resolved to examine more carefully the thin bed from which these fossils were obtained. In three weeks he excavated an area forty feet long and ten wide, and from the thin layer, which was only five inches thick, thus exposed, he obtained portions of the skeletons of twenty-eight distinct individuals, belonging to eight or nine genera, and to twelve or more species of insectivorous, predaceous, and herbivorous marsupials. In 1847, several teeth were found in the Trias of Germany, the oldest of the Secondary deposits which were supposed to be mammalian, and two years ago this was confirmed in England by the discovery of a two-fanged molar tooth of a mammifer in an indurated marl belonging to the Trias in Somersetshire, and in America by finding three jaws of a small insectivorous mammal in beds underlying the Chatham coal-field in North Carolina, which are of the same age as the European strata. In this sketch we have seen that a few years' observations have carried the fossiliferous strata nearly as far beyond the point at which life was believed to have made its appearance on the globe as we are from that point,-have banished from the science the errors regarding primeval granite and azoic metamorphic rocks,-have carried much further back the record of fishes, birds, and mammals, and have taken a long chapter from the history of reptiles. Were we to direct our attention also to the appearance and history of other forms of life, and examine sections of the science we have left untouched, it would be found that changes as important as those we have recorded have taken place in every department of geology. The bearing of such facts on the difficulties proposed by geologists against revelation is very obvious. Even granting the difficulty that surrounds the certain interpretation of those passages in the Scriptures that refer to extraordinary phenomena in nature, it is not to geology we can go for additional light; and the geologist who rightly estimates the present position of his science will be very cautious in venturing to oppose its apparent teachings to any entertained rational belief. W. C. Archbishop Anders Sunesen. 373 ART. VIII.-Archbishop Anders Sunesen: Schoolman, Statesman, and Ecclesiastic. En Skolastiker og en Bibeltheolog fra Norden. Af Fr. HAMMERICH, JUST UST two years and a half have elapsed since, in the Danish island of Falster, we chanced to stand, one delightful August evening, on an elevated ridge that overlooks the little town of Nykjöbing, and commands also a view of the Guldborg Sound. In the delicious stillness of the autumn night, we had climbed to its summit; and the beauty of the hour and the scene we shall ever remember. Behind us reposed a quiet churchyard, with its crosses wathed in garlands, sweet offering of the survivors' affection, and recalling to mind the vast eternity that rounds off all our fairest pictures in this world of time. Above, the stars sparkled forth slowly and dimly as the great purple splendour died in the distant west; while at our feet lay the quaint, small Scandinavian village, and beyond it that winding channel of the Baltic, wearing no features of resemblance to its tempestuous parent, but with star-smiles dimpling its mirror-like surface, and calm and lovely as a babe asleep. Yet with all the ineffable charm of the scene, there seemed something lacking,-the element of contrast, to impart to it perfection. The want was, however, remedied ere long. Far to eastward, during the hour we remained on the crest of the hill, there gathered at the verge of the horizon a pile of heavy thunder-clouds, and soon, with autumnal rapidity, towered higher and higher in the sky. Assuming the most fantastic forms, and riven into giant masses, they stood at last above the tranquil churchyard; while round their jagged edges began to play the first faint lightnings that foretold the coming storm. A fresh fascination was now communicated to the landscape; and the beauty of the western sea and shore grew still more beautiful when compared with the new phase of the eastern heavens. Fit emblem, this, we thought at the time, of history! Only in the vivid light of contrast with the past can the aspects of the present be fully and properly appreciated; only by allowing to the past its due place, under divine Providence, in the development of the world's destinies, can we at once comprehend aright the present, and venture, with some slight chance of certainty, to predict the future. As the dark mass of thunder-clouds educed fresh loveliness from the scene we were contemplating, and |